“There’s no saying,” replied Eben Trezise; “you’ve heerd as well as we of lodes takin’ the bit in their teeth an’ disappearing—eh?”
“Well, iss, so they do sometimes; I’ll not keep ’ee longer; good-hevenin’ to ’ee,” said Maggot, going outside the door and wishing them all manner of success as they returned to the old shaft.
Reader, shall we follow the two knowing fellows to that shaft? Shall we mark the bewildered expression of amazement with which they gazed into it, and listen to the wild fiendish laugh of mingled amusement and wrath that bursts from them in fitful explosions as the truth flashes into their unwilling minds? No; vice had triumphed over virtue, and we deem it a kindness to your sensitive nature to draw a veil over the scene of her discomfiture.
Chapter Fifteen.
Introduces a Stranger, describes a Picnic, and reveals some Secrets of Mining.
Somewhere in the vicinity of that magnificent piece of coast scenery in West Cornwall, known by the name of Gurnard’s Head, there sauntered, one fine afternoon, a gentleman of tall, commanding aspect. All the parts of this gentleman were, if we may so speak, prononcé. Everything about him savoured of the superlative degree. His head and face were handsome and large, but their size was not apparent because of the capacity of his broad shoulders and wide chest. His waist was slender, hair curly and very black, only to be excelled by the intense blackness of his eyes. His nose was prominent; mouth large and well shaped; forehead high and broad; whiskers enormous; and nostrils so large as to appear dilated. He was a bony man, a powerful man—also tall and straight, and a little beyond forty. He was to all appearance a hero of romance, and his mind seemed to be filled with romantic thoughts, for he smiled frequently as he gazed around him from the top of the cliffs on the beautiful landscape which lay spread out at his feet.
Above him there were wild undulating slopes covered with rich green gorse; below were the cliffs of Gurnard’s Cove, with rocky projections that resemble the castellated work of man’s hand, and intermingled therewith much of the matériel connected with the pilchard fishery, with masses of masonry so heavy and picturesque as to resemble Nature’s handiwork. Beyond lay the blue waters of the Atlantic, which at that time were calm almost as a mill-pond, studded with a hundred sails, and glittering in sunshine.
The spot appeared a beautiful solitude, for no living thing was visible save the romantic gentleman and a few seagulls and sheep. The pilchard fishery had not yet commenced, and the three or four fishermen who pitched and repaired their boats on the one little spot of sand that could be seen far below on that rugged coast appeared like mice, and were too far distant to break the feeling of solitude—a feeling which was not a little enhanced by the appearance, on a spot not far distant, of the ruined engine-house of a deserted mine.